Chest pain is a common complaint in a hospital or clinic emergency room (ER). Evaluating and diagnosing chest pain remains an enormous challenge. The ER physician generally must quickly rule out three of the most serious and most common possible causes of the chest pain—aortic dissection (aneurysm), pulmonary embolism (PE), and myocardial infarction (coronary artery stenosis). This type of triage is known in the industry as “triple rule out.” Until recently, three different classes of diagnostic procedures have been used in the ER to diagnose the three potential possibilities. Today, 64-slice multi-detector, computed tomography systems provide visualization of all three vascular beds—the heart, the lungs, and the thoraco-abdominal aorta. Computed tomography (CT) combines the use of x-rays with computerized analysis of the images. Beams of x-rays are passed from a rotating device through an area of interest in a patient's body from several different angles to create cross-sectional images, which are assembled by computer into a three-dimensional (3-D) picture of the area being studied. 64-slice CT includes 64 rows of detectors, which enable the simultaneous scan of a larger cross sectional area. Thus, 64-slice CT provides an inclusive set of images for evaluating the three primary potential causes of the chest pain.
Existing methods for the analysis of CT image data are semi-automatic and require a radiologist to perform a series of procedures step by step. For example, the radiologist analyzes blood vessels one by one by visually inspecting their lumen and looking for pathologies. This is a tedious, error-prone, and time consuming process. Thus, what is needed is a method and a system for automatically identifying and locating blood vessel pathologies. What is additionally needed is a method and a system for automatically quantifying a level of obstruction of a blood vessel.